Hi guys

I finally splashed some cash and upgraded my soundcard.  I could not make my mind up whether to get an integral PC card or External.  In the end I went for a Nuforce icon HDP Headphone amp.  When I first plugged it all in I was a bit disappointed the bass sounded very boomy and the volume was still very low. 

All this started because I ripped my music with a different codec.  I was amazed just how much difference there was, my new Sennheiser HD 25-1 II - headphones burst into life!I always just let itunes use its default settings.  Having now tried various codec's I decided to plump for Apple Lossless Audio Codec mainly because I can play it on my ipod in my car and it sounds good.  I really liked ogg vorbis but it would not play on the ipod!........ Anyway back to the DAC.  One thing I found was that using different Players the Music quality was vastly different and I was wondering if others had an opinion on my thoughts.  I have now tried various i.e. itunes,  Winamp Pro, Foobar2000 and Musicbee.

If I leave all my settings on the DAC the same:

itunes seems so quite and lifeless! But I like this for ripping my music and synching my ipod.

Winamp is very nice, sounds excellent, but I find it crashes a lot using Windows 7.

Foobar2000 sounds very nice but it has a dreadful interface for managing music.

Musicbee sounds very crisp with a nice bass and has good music management and interface.

My thoughts are to use itunes to rip my music and play using Musicbee, but this means I have to keep to players up to date.  I think Musicbee will manage my ipod but the bottom line is ripping my music in a good quality that will be ok for both.

I think I may be missing something to play my music from my PC.  The new DAC certainly sounds good now using Musicbee but any thoughts would be most welcome.

Thanks

Bob